Joshua Daniel Cochran's Blog

Still saddened by my good friend Hector’s sudden flight away

I soon decided naught could keep my sad farewell at bay

and wandered downtown past the bustling city’s heart

to see him off.

                      The day was sparkling clear with glistened rain

to wash the scent of urine from the darkest corner parts

of each and every building; vomit, a dog turd’s melting stain,

and cigarette butts washing out to sea.

                                                            New Bedford home

for him now.

                        Having spent his whole life on Manhattan Isle,

it seems too late for mid-life changes, new hungers to roam.

And as I walked, I wondered: All the times he’ll whittle while

here crucial moments pass with every breath, and moving out

to such a dismal place will only advance spiritual death and gout—

how could he ever come to such a lowly, sad effect?

And, more essential—the apartment’s lease is free, correct?

A cabby, busy, loaded boxes from the curb nearby

and Hector leaned against a lamppost smoking at the sky

dissected up above in squarish shapes and grayish hues.

He’d give that up, I thought, for what?

                                                          I wondered, how?

New Bedford offers only gray depressing views

all year, and even when the sun bursts through the constant clouds.

And the sky!

                        The New York sky!

                                                            To see its metered space

is to see all blue skies of the wide earth, so blessed by extinct gods

that once smiled upon each and every bird and stone and face,

when the Delaware and Mohican children danced backwoods

atrociously gone.

                        We’re left with nothing but each other

and, looking round; none of them really worth the bother.

Anonymous Hector, you want your person to be known?

The people there shall see your self-illusion of importance blown.

And Hector couldn’t hold his tongue.

                                                       “Since there’s no place in the city

for a modest man, and no reward for kindness and honesty,

and since my bank account is drained to dust and flinching mites

for several years now even though I drudge three middling jobs,

I’ve made my mind.

                              I’m going fair New England way, where nights

are cast of blackness, silence, not the neon’s glow and lowing sobs

of endless sirens cutting from the streets below.

                                                                                    I go

before my looks have left me full and my knees don’t mind the steps,

and my wood still works, while my heart still bounds in blood’s flow.

New York, good-bye!

                                    Let fools and suckers linger on if they accept

this false and wicked place where substance suffers constant death

for posture, seeming, lies and bloated egos, the wafting breath

of our decline.

                       It’s such a constant bother—this life of attrition              

beyond prevail—that flight becomes my critical mission.

“Just from the tourists!

                                      Standing slack-jawed beneath rising heights,

so unaware of locals trying to survive the sights,

and looking, pointing, dressed in Midwest hues, fairyland

before them standing planted firm, blocking the goddamned sidewalk.

No true New Yorker goes Times Square way unless a wary plan,

some vital sale, a Broadway show, or tax-free weekend bids them flock

among the fools.

                          Believe, if the tourist stays planted firm

and dumb, your truest native will throw a gentle elbow

amongst the fatted ribs—the tourists quietly confirm

that rumors among them so true.

                                                  With faces aglow

it’s hard to fathom why they come… just to smell success?

But it stinks here, and all I see is blatant uselessness

and squandered lives ground down to dust between these same buildings

inspiring awe amid their childish want to live like kings.

“What good am I in New York?

                                                   To myself or others I cannot lie.

If Juvenal saw this false shadow-Rome he’d likely spit, as I—

Phttthu!

               How can you or I remain among such ample emptiness?

I cannot smile for a dollar’s wage, nor fake an idea is all the rage

just for a slim promotion at some bootlickers job of impress—

expensive suits while still a whore beneath, my apartment a cage

where every penny goes.

                                       And since I cannot lie—

                                                                             to slave!

To slave the days beneath my thoughts and mind

mixing drinks or serving food or an honest college try

at selling streetside baubles, my degree in English maligned—

such lesser beings all!

                                     You look at me as if I’m crazed

but listen, friend, I’ve come to know this city must be razed.

Small wonder, though, after our city’s greatest tragedy,

they didn’t continue the cleanup mess past Trinity

and up the Village east to west, where all the bags of air,

posers, artistes, trust-fund babies, mill on other’s money

and live amongst the bustle because their frail hearts and care,

the motions of their own minds, sow weak discordant harmony,

and from the void of self they wander kitsch, posing facades,

inventing import.

                          More pitiful than the starving children of the world.

With nothing in heart or mind, they continue, talking along gray esplanades

of therapists, their dogs and friends, best espressos; thoughts curled

about such things because they have so little otherwise.

Their only redeeming quality—that I can surmise—

is that they live in New York.

                                              Without this metropolis

their lives would show beneath their soul’s debauched necropolis.

Yet so much better off…

                                         It is the fate of many here

perpetually floundering between pleasure and fear

of making it through one more day—that’s the only pleasure.

A sudden alley knife, or straying bullet, shoved on the tracks,

these are what waits for us all, if we play the odds and measure

our days of endurance—prostitutes sprawled on aching backs—

still working on until a sudden death comes from the sky

above us now, the New York sky.

                                                     Don’t look at me like that.

Oh, you among the worst, the kind that say, “Not I”

two years here dancing with the rest of them, and think yourself phat

when you leave a decent tip and flash practiced expressions

all dawdled dandy, catching smiles in storefront reflections,

on credit.

                On Credit.

                                   Are you happy with what you see

or secretly hope for a shove beneath an uptown C?

Be careful what you wish for, friend.

                                                         The churches won’t save you—

as if this place revolved around any higher sacred truth

than tender.

                   There is only one grand temple to the God

of our great country, right here in the heart of our brothel-city.

Wall Street, protected daily by men in arms, the rod

and lance to keep the sharks protected.

                                                              It isn’t pretty—

the fortune of working men and women should be so doomed

to those who know jack squat of honest labor, a day’s work,

and bustling, jabber gibberish in shiny shoes, all groomed,

for their unyielding gore of moral death.

                                                             For prey, a smirk

and wink the only reaction, the only way to tell that they’re alive.

At home, at night, you’ll find them dancing round the pyre

with blood of infants dripping from their thirsty lips.

Toward Baal and Moloch, justice never, do their achings tip.

Oh this is the place where, like water, so much money flows—

through gorges of the rich, or through the poor man’s fingers goes

the runnels joined to meager streams, returning to the canyon home

along Fifth Avenue.

                                Have you seen the women there? Dear lord—

their faces stretched to ghoulish masks, the fashion stores they roam

with rubber breasts and plastic cheekbones rigid with youth restored

in semblance of some mockery.

                                                What the hell are they thinking?

If I was ever to see such an apparition brushing my teeth

I would most likely die of fright.

                                                Just try and catch them blinking.

If only the rotting ones were hiding fair Nature beneath—

that’s all right—but the youth!

                                             A once pretty girl impossibly made—

an automaton—beneath her titties, constant shade.

Oh people, let Nature take Her course.

                                                       After time your flesh has devoured,

sleep. You’ll have lived a true life, not as a shunning coward.

“I see you nodding, smiling, as if somehow worse than men,

but postures, seeming, lies, with us is so much more common.

Exaggerated swaggers, sideways glances fishing ire

just daring one to furnish cause, to vent our impotence

both real and imagined.

                                    This city lights our hearts afire,

wild passions, wants and dumb desire—that or does dispense

cold water to snuff the flickering flame.

                                                           To be a man

in this dead city is against all Nature—a strong back

and calloused hands hold no measure here.

                                                                  The unspoken plan

is not to prove through deed but simply front, which shows the lack

of substance beneath the form, to be a man in shadow.

Everything here is but seeming, lies and untruths.

                                                                           Although

there are some places beauty’s seen around about, they glint

with light in rarity, so often you’ll have to squint.

Like Harlem sweet where every true American dream has slept

where Liberty laughed a heartfelt joy while sullen Justice wept

and weeps today.

                             Worse for white kids moving in the borough.

Yet Harlem’s self-misuse does squander bright, inherent riches—

community so strong and fair, passion strength so thorough—

yet rapping music—sisters, daughters, mothers—calling them bitches?

It’s how we keep ourselves down with hatred unforgiven,

sins long cold, while hot sin swirls about of our own design,

of self-made wrath.

                                If not for those born in favor driven,

couldn’t we live together?

                                       So oft the gentle hand declined,

in either hue, beside what honor lies within the heart subdued.

New York is almost harmonious, near perfection too,

enduring moments of racial peace—aware, though different shade,

in one image of beauty and truth is every person made.

Hold, cabbie, hold!

                                You see? There are exceptions to the rule,

like this gabbing hack.

                                    I will pay your absurd fare.

                                                                              Damn fool—

he doesn’t know his tongue still wags.

                                                          Many come here seeking fame,

and arrogant of their native lives, they’ll shun ours to bring theirs

and fly their brightly foreign flags while Glory’s colors wane.

In Chinatown unwelcome unless buying cheap trinkets, tourist wares,

and Little Italy but for gorging guts—down each street

of every borough do we furrow amongst similar kind

and never mind the concord.

                                             Insults greet us each to each

and harmony’s found in the slow-moving bodega line.

Go there, Oh Child of America, thou noble New Yorker,

in any of them—they’re all the same in form and odor—

the scowling clerk acts as if he’s doing you the favor

while he suckles the wilted teats of our nation’s labor.

 Such are our many perks, advantages suburbia lacks—

What shit is this?

                          Like subways?

                                                   The odor of dank butt cracks

stale urine, rotting rodents along the tracks?

                                                                     MTA…

it really stands for Might Take Awhile, and if you’re in haste

plan on suffering deafening noise on the platform’s edge and wait

while laughing workers shuffle fattly about their lifelong waste

of broken dreams revised to relish your delay.

                                                                         You’re late

and may be fired (the bootlickers job) yet badgered for dollars

by seasoned beggars pulling at your guilt with luckless fate

and flaking hands and crooked backs.

                                                            They make more than scholars,

or I with all my slaving… and at days end they go home

with bellies full and a fresh pint of Jack, their daily roam

brings them back again.

                                       If you don’t go mad living here

or die of plague or scurvy or the pox, you’re blessed to heaven dear.

No.

         But if all the world was Central Park… ah, what beauty’s there!

Though Nature’s hemmed in block and square, sweet chaos has a lair

among us.

                 Often traipsing through enchanted wood and glade

to burn the gray mind back to green again, reminds our heart’s intent

is less to bustle and to slave than know of Nature we are made.

Wander dappled light of lording trees, a darkened-earth scent,

Bohemian and free.

                               If all the world was Central Park

I’d never want to leave.

                                      No, humming along gentle trail,

wieners waiting brownly stewing—chance upon a hotdog cart—

at times the greatest meal on earth.

                                                      Yet never fear, a hearty hail

will summon waiting cabs who troll the edge like hounds—

museums, finer foods, the greater world in far surrounds,

though ever near, hardly heard, and smaller than its emerald core,

the vibrant throbbing center that makes New York a place of lore.

But it’s not all parks and smiles, nor nods or becks or wanton wiles—

it’s lust and anger confused into millions per square mile

and broken dreams and ill dreams dreamt, where countless lives expire,

are spent in utter exhaustion, all blurred in dizzying speed

toward the grave-filled soils.

                                            A place of toils and lost desire.

A place of filth and grime and senseless crime, of blinding greed

and bottomless wants, slim unfed needs, where injustice haunts

our every move.

                         Oh friend, you would be wise to join my flight

from this fetid meat-hole.

                                         What say you?

                                                                 You’re not one that flaunts

your ignorance so like a flag.

                                               New England’s a fair sight

for asphalt-lidded eyes, and there we can curse and despise

New York like any other American who denies

the throne of the wide world.

                                             Oh, well.

                                                            I see you will not leave.

Farewell.

               And if you scribble a good line, come—let me read.”

And as I watched tired Hector’s taxi pull away and flee

a strong sensation, near elation, trickled over me,

that there is one less cynic in the city (a damn pity,

there never seems to be enough of them in general),

Yet I couldn’t help but think that New York is less shitty

than his dire view intends.

                                       This place a concrete pastoral

that imbues its hues upon all who dwell here, to love it

is easy; to leave is difficult.

                                             Perhaps he but convinced

himself.

              Poor Hector.

                                      Forever will his dreams populate

this city, this haven in a world so unsure, condensed

to visions strong, and intentions pure—the last hope for mankind,

for true potential unity and our woken heart’s sublime.

Besides, his growling made me nostalgic to embark—

a pleasant stroll before me, and hot dogs in Central Park.

While I’m usually not one to identify with religious wackos, Joan of Arc serves as a remarkable example of the power of the individual.

The “Hundred Years’ War” was a series of conflicts between France and England that occurred from roughly 1335-1450 (115 years’ war isn’t as catchy, is it?). These two countries decimated each other over who owed allegiance to whom, and Joan of Arc was born amid the rubble in the small village of Domrémy, France, in 1412.

Born a virtual nobody and peasant (her family operated a small farm… her father was the equivalent of a policeman), she became a standard bearer, warrior, and commander of armies at the age of sixteen.

Her history is complicated but brief… She experienced a religious “vision” of three saints who instructed her to drive out the British. Imagine that… you’re a twelve year old farm girl surrounded by enemies and God calls upon you to do something about it.

So she did something.

By disguising herself as a male, she made her way through hostile territory to Chinon, where she sought to petition French commanders to tell her story. She was eventually granted a meeting with them only because a prediction she made about the battle of Orleans came true.

Sensing that the entire regime was about to be defeated, Charles II actually put her in charge of French forces… and while she most often served as a “standard bearer” or one who holds the flag and rallies support, she always dressed in full knight regalia and was known to kill many on the battlefield. Once, she was shot in the neck with an arrow, fell back to staunch the wound, then fought on to the final battle. In the battle of Paris, she suffered on despite a crossbow bolt in her leg.

The French, under her brief guidance, won victory after victory and effectively reversed the direction of the Hundred Years’ War.

She was captured… of her own will. She remained the last on the field of battle in 1430 (a position of extreme honor for a knight) and was captured after her horse was felled by an archer. She refused to surrender even then.

She was then moved around a lot. She once jumped eighty feet from the tower where she was imprisoned, only to be recaptured. An English Lord tried to rape her in prison, but he was, ahem, unsuccessful.

Once the political power began to sway back toward the British, she was put on trial for heresy in regard to her religious “visions.” When asked if she was in God’s grace, she famously replied, “’If I am not, may God put me there; and if I am, may God so keep me.” Her answer stupefied the court, since the statement was not heretical, but they found her guilty and burned her at the stake at the age of nineteen.

One in four Americans is basically illiterate, unable to read news articles, prescription information or the ever-vital holiday sale advertisements. The United States is now ranked 50th among the 191 countries of the United Nations in literacy rates. And this doesn’t even take into account the functionally illiterate; people who know how to read but merely choose not to.

Is this important?

Yes. But unfortunately, only people who read are probably aware of this information, and the information that follows:

Books can be used for a variety of things besides reading. You can prop up a table or bed, use a stack of them as a table, and the pages can be torn and used as kindling or for writing notes or even in lieu of toliet paper.

In May of 1797, Samuel Boddington of Philadelphia killed two Indians with a copy of the King James Bible. He claimed it was in self defense. His story has been widely circulated in academic rumor-circles as the first murder committed using a book as the primary weapon. Some say, however, that Boddington stabbed the two Indians (a young woman and adolescent boy) and then beat them with the book as they lay dying. Boddington was later heard boasting that he had, rather impossibly, stabbed the two Indians with the book.

But the Egyptians used large tablets made of stone, which might be considered “books” of a sort. And since an unknown number of slaves were killed using these as weapons, Boddington’s dubious place in history should be corrected as the first murder by a book printed on paper (and never mind the unsubstantiated multitudes of deaths via papyrus scrolls in ancient Greece. A scroll, no matter how long, is NOT a book).

The Omni-Y is the future. Everything is going digital. Books, magazines, newspapers will be a thing of the past! Webcasts, podcasts, streaming video. Digital books purchased a chapter at a time. Eventually we won’t even need books! The printed word is a pain in the neck… look, download a Franzen novel, read the New York Times. Want to see the latest stock numbers? How about the big game?

Everything is changing, and now it’s either modify or mummify. Soon, we won’t even need printers. Think of all the trees. Just think about that. Everything electronic. That’s the way the world is going and you better get used to it.

The Omni-Y is the future. It makes anything possible!

When I was a good reader (now I just read like a horse at a trough, thank you very much, graduate degree in English) I would go through authorial bursts; I’d find an author I liked and I’d grab hold and read everything written. Steinbeck, Hesse, Woolf, Dostoevsky, you name it. Oh I’d dabble too. Huxley, Morrison, Hemmingway, Walker, Silko… but a burst was something. I read everything written by James Blish over a month or so in 1987. Oh I’d do ‘trashy’ reads too, dimestore paperbacks by the fistful. Whatever. If walking or sitting or standing or shitting, I might as well be reading.

My last authorial burst was Edward Abbey, in late 1995, and something opened up to me, a realization; I saw in him what I saw in all the rest. For most authorial bursts, I wasn’t too sad about finishing an author because by the last book I’d understood the person, it was enough. But very often, toward the end things got shaky. They became broken somehow—on the inside. Slogging through the fifteen novels that occur after the Dune trilogy… I couldn’t do it. It became too much. The Glass Bead Game? Sweeping and epic, certainly, but none of that brevity, that power of brevity. These authors come to hold you with their bony hands to stay, stay. Listen. Listen to what I have to say.

It’s pretty sad when you think about it.

Okay I lied. I’ve had many authorial bursts since Edward Abbey in 1995. I was just trying to be dramatic. There has since been many—Murakami, Borges, Nabokov, and others—but it’s still the same; after a number of books, it fades, it fades.

Unless we’re talking dimestore stuff like King and Oates and Steele and Updike. They can pretty much can keep pumping out the shite until they die.

There is a distinct correlation between literacy and intelligence. People who read books are usually smarter than people who do not. End of story. If you don’t read books, you’re most likely a dumb ass. Go ahead and look it up. The statistics are overwhelming. Oh yeah, nevermind… you don’t fucking read. (and you know who I’m talking to)

Which isn’t to say that ‘smart’ people don’t often do stupid things, it’s just that when they do something stupid it looks really stupid, and friends and enemies alike will come out of the woodwork to point and guffaw. And it isn’t to say that people who don’t read can’t be smart every once in a while. Hell, it often makes them look smarter than they are (please refer to above explanation of the smart/stupid irony to understand the simultaneously correlative and opposite stupid/smart causal relationship).

You see how it works?

Anyway, the point is, people who don’t read books make less money, are more prone to crime and depravity, often smell bad, have that white spittle at the corners of their mouths, and are unlucky in love.

Children who grow up in homes filled with books are smarter, more likely to go to college, and less prone to psychological abnormalities, drug use, and chronic masturbation.

For a few winters between my firefighting job with the Forest Service, I made bookshelves at Booked Up, a little used bookstore owned by Larry McMurtry. Yeah, yeah. I met him once and he squinted at me and mumbled either ‘hello’ or ‘hi there.’

I always thought about the books going on to the bookshelf, how important it was over anything else. Sure, some of my bookshelves were squarer than others, sure a few listed to the side a bit (I’d bolt them to the wall anyway) but dammit, the edge had just a slight roundness to it. Just enough for a book to slide perfectly into its destination. Phip!

Once when making a bookshelf, I got a huge piece of wood stuck in my eye.

Okay, that’s a little deceptive. Really, I just wasn’t wearing any safety goggles and cut a board and an enormous piece of wood flew into my eye. So I was in agony. And I blamed books, the goddamn books.

I vomited in the car on the way to the doctor the next morning. The fucking pain! No amount of saline or potato held against my eye would draw out the gigantic hunk of wood imbedded there. The doctor tried to show it to me, an invisible fleck upon his medicinal-grade tissue, he kept pointing to it with his tweezers, but I knew that wasn’t it. There has to be more than that, I said. There has to be more, then I vomited again on the floor.

Instead of books, you can just read text in the Omni-Y experience! Download the file for uninterrupted playback later… even in the subway, on a plane, or out of your service area!

Books are technically words written on paper and bound together into a coherent whole. However, novels are what I’m really talking about here. You know, fiction. A non-fiction book isn’t really a book at all, but (hopefully) an interesting collection of facts. A novel can sweep you away, not with words, but with your own imagination. People who don’t read fiction have little imagination, and their brains are substantially smaller, atrophied due to this misuse of the mind’s eye.

People talk about the decline of fiction and the rise of non-ficiton, particularly memoirs. Memoirs are not books, but narcissistic endeavors driven by ego and solipsism. The individual human life is interminably boring and not very unique. Think about it… billions and billions of people on the earth over time, and then this one person thinks that their life is worth being represented in words?! Get over yourself. Everybody’s grandma dies. Please stop writing these goddamn boring incidents about your life.

The only thing worse than a memoir is a celebrity of some kind who writes a book. The only reason these books are published is because of the author’s status, not due to talent or an undying love for the written word. Not everyone should write a book and even writing a book doesn’t mean that it’s good, should be published, or deserves to be read by anyone.

Case in point: myself. As a lover of words, a fanatic reader since a child, someone who has devoted his entire life to reading and writing, even I have written a book. Hell, I’ve written two. They’re both sitting on a shelf in my studio apartment, gathering a blackened coating of New York City air. Nobody will publish them, and nobody will read them. This is not because of some conspiracy, but because they are not really good enough to be in print. And I know they’re broken… they’ve got wobbly wheels and are a grind to get through. I’m shooting for a decent book by the time I’m fifty. Decent. You know, as in not entirely bad.

I’m now starting on my third novel, much like any delusional person who chases after some illusive and vaporous vision.

There’s something about an old book. Not just an old book, but a book that has been read and re-read, loaned out and never returned to its rightful owner, read by strangers and lovers and enemies alike. A relatively new book can become old just by how much it’s read. You can feel it in the pages.

Sometimes I’ll turn a page of an old book and wonder; who has turned this page before me? Were they sitting while the kids yelled in the background? Were they on a train? In a car? On the couch? On the toilet? Lying in bed before sleep overtook them?

And sometimes I’ll come across something in an old book—a newspaper clipping, a pressed leaf or flower, a photo, a note to remember to buy cheese—and these things haunt me as much if not more than any word upon the page.

The Bible has been shoplifted or stolen more than any other book in the history of the world. Way to be, hypocrites…

I stopped going to the library after the Patriot Act was passed into law. Before that, I lived at the library. The library was my refuge. When other kids were playing or lighting things on fire, I would go to the library like a goddamned nerd. To this day, just smelling a library calms me down somewhat.

First was the Woods Memorial Branch in Tucson… the young adult section got me through middle school. In high school, I moved up to the Main Library in Tucson… until it moved from its historic building to the Po-Mo inspired monstrosity currently downtown. The University of Arizona Library put it to shame, and I spent unknown weeks perusing the many floors while studying there, ever on the lookout for the perfect spot. I eventually found it on the fourth floor, with grand views of the Catalina Mountains and what once was the U of A mall.

But then came the Patriot Act… and I’ll be goddamned if somebody is going to look at what I’m checking out, my own beloved government, no less.

Eventually, I made my way back. I go to the library now to read or study, to smell the books, to hear muffled coughs and unconscious mutterings three aisles away, but I never check out books. Now in New York, I love the Main Humanities Library on 42nd, the one with the lions out front. And though I study at City College, the library there really sucks and is often louder than the cafeteria. In my neighborhood, the Inwood branch caters to books in Espanol, which is just fantastic and multicultural. I really hope for books in even more languages, like Latin or Czech.

But I just cant check out a book, so sometimes I’ll thumb through them and read bits and snatches, but it’s always back on the shelf for you. There’s no need for my government to have access to my Blish burst or anything else.

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Soon you won’t even need a screen because images will be cast directly onto your retinas! Your ears will be wired for perfect three-dimensional sound! Very small hard-drives will be embedded beneath the skin to store and retrieve your favorite Tee Vee shows, music videos, newspapers and other media. And no one else can see or hear them, nobody but YOU!

Downloads can take place either via a remote device or with an additional implant less than three millimeters in length!

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Usually placed near the base of the skull, the Omni-Y INlink keeps you connected while on the go! E-mail, instant messaging, eBay, Porn. Anything you want!

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I miss libraries more than anything. Now if I want a book, I have to go buy it. New books suck. Some people like the idea, you know, knowing that you’re the first. But I like something seasoned. You know it when you see a book that’s twenty years old but in perfect shape, it’s most likely a piece of shite. A new book is like a young person; the potential is there, but the odds are it’ll turn out to be a piece of shite.

So now I buy used books, and since there are fewer and fewer used book shops and more conglomerates… well, it just sucks. But is the book industry as corrupt as the music industry, where only the most marketable (or seemingly marketable) are pushed upon the public?

Perhaps. And perhaps I’m just a Bitter Nelly.

In the English Department at the City College of New York (Harlem’s Harvard), one of the hallway doors is semi-permanently propped open with a book jammed between the wall and the door. I won’t tell you the name of the novel, because it might eschew your perception of either the author or the English Department at CCNY. If you really want to know, go there yourself and look.

People dream of fantasy getaways, tropical locales or perhaps the ruins of some other culture as the destinations of their vacations. My perfect vacation involves none of these things but a comfortable chair, a steady supply of coffee and cigarettes (and other addictions), and a stack of fantastic books I’ve never read.

Nothing has helped as much for me in my life, and the understanding of it, than books. And I’ve been to church. I might even venture to say that I consider myself highly spiritual. But the clearest place I’ve ever seen a hint of divinity in the world was in the flashing of mind and imagination brought about by a skilled author massaging the folds of my brain. Perhaps it was phantom and meaningless, but at least it was there.

If you are one of the lucky ones to be able to read and understand words, pick up a book. Any book, even a shitty one. Do not stab anybody, just read it. Let it take you where it will, even if it’s a cul-de-sac of the mind. The next might be even better.

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When the darkness comes, it is total.

For most of my life, I’ve battled anxiety and depression. This battle has worn me out. There are days when I dread opening my eyes. There are difficult days.

The fact that I have a young son helps. I cannot be depressed around him, and he keeps me buoyant in an otherwise sinking world. But due to the fact that I only have my son half of the time (a scorched-earth custody battle is in the rearview mirror) the other half of my time on earth is tenuously dreadful. I can’t seem to break the cycle.

Therapy helps. But I cannot find all the answers in therapy. I try to be kind to myself. I try. But trying is for suckers. Doing is what we all want, what I want.

So this is an attempt to be open and honest about who I am and what I’ve gone through. Please don’t mistake this for a call for help or anything of the sort. I’m merely journaling. I’m merely trying to understand and make active progress toward a day when the darkness is safely on the horizon line where it belongs.

And I realize many more have suffered much more than I. This isn’t “My pain is bigger than your pain” academic mumbo-jumbo. Many of us have survived truama, and it affects us all differently. Some traumas, we can easily survive. Others, for some reason, take a greater toll. I’m sure there are people who have had a similar experience to mine, and were able to power through. They had the tools and resources to remain intact and unharmed. I had no such tools. I wasn’t prepared for this. Death? Sure. Pandemics and job insecurity and burning cities and lockdowns? No problem.

That’s why I’ve decided to share the line–we all have a line or many lines. Before the line was your old self. But the line (an event or occurrence) is a demarcation between the old you and a new you. The old you is gone, and the world has forever been changed. My goal is to survive this and remain optimistic, positive and good. But sometimes it’s damn hard to not hate the whole world (except my son). Including myself. The line is sharp, and forever marks where my old life ended and this new one began.

The Custody Battle:

Nothing prepared me for the trauma of April 2018. When my partner, who has three children from a previous marriage, moved out with our three-month-old son one day when I went to work, the wheels fell off of my life.

Certainly, I was stressed by the pressures of moving from a single, introverted writer and college instructor, to a “family man” with multiple step children and an infant. My partner became increasingly hostile throughout and after the pregnancy, which increased the pressures. Nightly, she would berate and spew hatred after all the kids were fed (by me) and asleep. Each night, the same spiral of her voice. I am nothing. I am false. I am not a good man (or smart, or kind, or etc.). Her voice was the voice of my lifelong depression, a demon speaking in my ear. Since everything she said basically confirmed my own insecurities (maybe I’m not good or kind or smart) they began to win out. I dreaded coming home, but my baby boy was there. He was the only aspect of my life that mattered, that I cared about.

And yes, my partner said I wasn’t a good father too. But I know I am. I also know that I’m a good person, a kind man, and a talented thinker. I can weld, write and woo.

But after she moved out one day, my mind came unglued. My only confidant at work hugged me and told me that my partner’s actions weren’t normal, and weren’t how healthy people operate. No, my partner never spoke to me about moving out. I just went to work one day and returned, ready for my next moments with my son, and everything was gone.

When I could finally get a hold of my partner, I asked why. Why did she leave? She would only answer “you know why.” But I never found out. As of now, it no longer matters. She said she was worried for the health and safety of our son, and her other children. But why? What did a fairly boring guy do or say to make her feel this way? Again, I don’t know and it no longer matters. I suppose her nightly monologues on all my shortcomings became real to her. She believed her own words. I rarely defended myself. Sometimes she would shove me so far down that I could only explosively defend myself, which would come off as hostile and in-line with her damning accusations.

My father paid to have the movers come while I was at work, to remove all of my life from our home. My mother believed that I was a danger to my son. Why else would my partner move away? What she said to my parents and others had to be true for her to make such a dramatic move. I was not a good man. I was an alcoholic. I was a danger to my baby boy.

What?

Most of the aftermath of that day in April 2018 was a swirl of confusion. Coworkers stopped me in the hall and asked about my son, my happiness. I had to pretend all was well. If I opened my mouth and spoke the truth… well, falling apart in public just wasn’t an option.

Nightly, I found myself wallowing on the floor, crying. I know that’s about as pathetic a picture one can paint, but that’s how I coped. Since I wasn’t good, since I was a danger to my son, I fell into the deepest, darkest pit of depression I’ve ever experienced, and I’ve been pretty low. How I managed to get up and teach classes is a mystery to me. I was held together by rotted tape and knotted strings. Sometimes I couldn’t hold it together. I broke down in my office a few times. I screamed into my pillow at night until my voice was nothing but a rasp, and slept less than a few hours per night. I couldn’t speak to anyone… my own mother and father believed I was some monster. I had nobody to talk to, nobody to confide in, nobody to help.

I managed to see my son as much as I was allowed by my partner, but I never got to do many of the things that fatherhood promised. I missed his first word. I missed many firsts. After making it through the summer break, which was mostly spent on the floor of my livingroom, writhing in a blackness that made me want to claw my own eyes out, to tear off my skin, my voice hoarse and ruined from uncontrollable tears—a kind of crying I’ve never known—I made one attempt after another to salvage my life. My son! I waited my entire life for my son to show up, and then he was taken away. I drank if I remembered to, but I didn’t need alcohol to feel any worse than I already did. Nothing numbed the pain. I lost days and days to sitting in my livingroom, staring at the television—which was off most of the time. The dark, empty screen stared back at me with unflinching hatred, kindness, confusion. I very nearly lost my mind.

Son gone. Partner gone. Parents gone. Joshua gone.

Five months after the day she left, I mustered up the courage to mention mediation so I could have partial custody and time with my son, my former partner erupted in rage. While holding our son, who was crying, she screamed at me in her loudest voice. She would move, leave the state. I would never find her. I would never see my son again. I was a pussy. I should just shut up and crawl into a bottle and die.

And that’s when I realized something. That was her plan. My partner knew more about me than any human on earth. With her, I believed in the power of truth and trust. I thought I found my soulmate. For years, I held nothing back. It was refreshing to find someone so understanding, who listened. And everything she knew about me—my tendency toward depression, my self-doubt and low self-esteem—was used against me. She actually wanted me dead. She wanted me to do the dirty work. She purposefully shoved me so far into the earth that I couldn’t find a way up on my own. My mother and father. My son.

When I left after her latest rage attack, I remembered some aspects about myself. I got a lawyer. Leading up to the trial, I didn’t see my son for three months of his first year of life. After two trial dates, the judge granted me observed custody for three hours, three days a week. My lawyer said this was expected, and a step-by-step process. My mother had to be present during my custody time–the same woman who believed I was a danger to my son, the woman who raised me to be a kind man, the woman who has known me my entire life but believed my partner, known for about three years.

But I got to see my son!

Yes, it took three months and two trials to be granted observed visitations, but I didn’t care. I love fatherhood. I love my son so much it hurts my chest when I think of him and all I wanted to spare him—a broken home, poverty, growing up without a father—everything I had suffered as a child.

You see, at the first trial, I was blindsided by my partner’s response to my petition for partial custody. She wrote sworn statements that purported I physically abused my son, physically abused her, was a drug addict and an alcoholic. None of this was true, but I had to defend myself against every allegation. When you have a crying mother on the stand, and a man accused of vile things, you can imagine how the trial went.

And I know… everyone I ever mentioned this to would roll their eyes. One colleagues said, “Oh, you goddamned men,” when I told her of my situation. There is a correct tendency to assume a mother is inherently better at parenting than a father. This is usually true. But there are plenty of terrible mothers who psychologically and physically abuse or even kill their children. So there.

We spent the first two trial dates on the allegations of me physically abusing my son, which of course turned out to be nothing. I would never harm a child. I abhor violence of any kind and rarely raise my voice. I have never touched a woman on this earth in any threatening or aggressive manner. It’s hard to be an alcoholic, drug addict while working fifty hours per week in academia. I agreed to alcohol monitoring and drug tests. I defended myself. My partner looked crazier and crazier to the court, to my family. My mother and father came around, never apologizing, but finding out that my former partner was batshit crazy.

My parenting time increased. I eventually got unsupervised visits. The first time I was alone with my only son occurred when he was nearly a year old. I still had limited time, but I was a father, and my son was finally with me. Yes, if you haven’t already known, I cried. I’ve always enjoyed a good cry. Any man who says that isn’t manly is probably a misogynist or trapped by societal expectations. But I can cry at a good commercial. Happy tears are my favorite of course, and I get many of those now with my son.

The custody battle continued. My partner sought therapy for our son because she felt he was traumatized by being with me. Since her original accusations didn’t work, she accused me of being mentally unstable and incapable of being a father due to depression and suicidal thoughts. All notes from two therapists I’d seen (one for chronic back pain years ago, the other for the loss of my son) were brought into court. The fact that I had been sexually abused was brought up, along with my lifelong battle with anxiety and depression. Not only was this information disseminated, but it was aired to the world. When that didn’t prove to be damning to her cause, my partner went to the next level.

To keep her hands clean, she mentioned concerns of sexual abuse to my son’s therapist. The therapist, due to mandatory reporting laws, was required to report me to the state. So after being accused of domestic violence, child abuse, drug and alcohol abuse, and mental instability, I awoke one morning to two investigators for Child Protective Services interviewing me about “rectal tearing” mentioned by my ex. I nearly vomited right there in my own kitchen, in front of these two women staring at me like I was the most vile thing scraped off their shoe.

My only response: “If I ever noticed any such thing regarding my son, the first thing I would do is call the police. Did she ever call the police? That’s what a responsible parent would do.”

So that ended that. To spare reliving the vast majority of a time that was so incredibly bittersweet—I was spending time with my son, but battling this ridiculous custody dispute that shook the foundations of all I knew about the world and myself—I will cut to the chase. Yes, I followed my ex to find out where she was taking my son when I discovered she didn’t return home after picking him up at exchange. I was going insane. She was found to have moved back in with her previous husband—the man who actually beat her and raped her and threatened to kill her repeatedly and in full view of her children. She lied to the court about her address and the fact that she was co-habitating with this man (who had threatened my life as well). My son wasn’t safe.

She signed off on my custody request the night before the next trial date, which would have exposed her lies and falsity in an entirely new light. I got 50/50 custody of my son. My lawyer called to give me the news. I was in a training session and had to go into a bathroom stall where I allowed hot tears to flow. Yes, I was out fifty thousand dollars—my son’s college fund. A lifetime of vacations. Whatever. I had my son. I could be a father. Finally.

But that didn’t stop the crazytrain from moving full steam ahead. My former partner suffers greatly from some serious disorders. She had my son seen by specialist after specialist. There was always something wrong. Then she got him diagnosed as autistic before the age of two. More therapists and specialists. But my ex feels important, needed. She has never had a career or a job to note, and she has nothing to do but manufacture disharmony and strife. When one comes from an abusive background, often one learns to almost crave tension. Tension is normal. If there is no tension present, it will be manufactured. So my son has become her tension, used to satisfy her need to be listened to, valued, believed.

For her, my son is not normal. He isn’t developing correctly. He’s damaged goods.

But she cannot make it true alone. She needs others to support her theories and thoughts. She wants him to always need her. She wants strife and tension because that’s what normal life feels lik.

Time with my son is all I have now. Yes, it has been one year since the trial ended, but that year has been swallowed up by darkness and light. The light is my son, my every second with him. The darkness is everything else.

I have lost everything… trust in my family, a life with my son and a loving partner, and many friends who stopped hearing from me for the years spent crying on the floor of my livingroom. I now have nobody but my two and a half year old son. The pandemic has removed me from my work as an instructor. I have zero social contacts. No sign of romance or love on the horizon, and honestly, the thought of such makes my heart pound in anxiety. Who is to say my next love won’t do the same? In short, I worry for myself, for my son. I want to be here for him, and want to be the man I was before falling so deep into the well of despair that I still, I STILL cannot get out.

I am in therapy. I try to find ways to smile. I will continue to march onward, two steps forward for each backward.

Between time with my son, I know I shouldn’t sit and stare at the dead television screen. I know what I should do. My therapist is frustrated with my lack of progress, and so am I. When I find myself lying rigid in my bed at 3am, every muscle tensed and arrested, heart pounding, I hear my therapist’s words: You are experiencing PTSD. Allow it to pass through you. It will go away, slowly, if you make peace with who you are and what you have accomplished.

But when you’re coming out of such a deep hole, it can take years. I’m hopeful. The days ahead will be difficult, but rewarding. My son is sensitive, brilliant, amazing and a force of light. He is a good person. A little like his dad, in those respects.

If only I could remember who I am all the time, I’d be that much further toward the end of this horrible period of my life.

My ex is still a terrible person. Many have said, “It will get better once she sees what a great dad you are, once the passion of her lunacy has ebbed. I don’t think it ever will. I have to suffer through every exchange, every mean-spirited email or accusation or snide remark. But I am not a terrible human person. At exchange, I smile for my son’s sake. I keep it light and positive and am not baited into my ex partner’s drama show. But it still hurts both me and my son.

I am crawling out of the hole, and nothing will keep me from being a positive, kind, thoughtful and loving man. Though the journey thus far has been long and lonely, I will persevere. I must.

And with that, I carry on…

If you’ve had a traumatic experience you are struggling to make sense of and recover from, please feel free to post on contact me directly if you’d like to stay out of the public eye. Just speak. Write. Even though writing this was painful, I feel a little better now. A little.

And I pick up my son in a couple of hours for the weekend. It will be a great weekend. Once it’s over, I need to be a few more inches toward the top of the hole. I’m digging upward, but it’s slow going.

(a short story)

 

Brent Foley pads his way into the kitchen dressed in underwear and nothing else. If not for the fact that he is forty-six years old and bald, he could have been a child. It is the same kitchen, after all, the same refrigerator in which he now rummages for something to eat, the same knife in which he cuts cheddar and smears butter on slices of bread. In ten minutes, he carries a toasted ham and cheese sandwich into the living room and turns on the television. Sounds of screeching tires and explosions fill the house. Brent slouches on the couch and shoves a triangle-shaped wedge of sandwich into his mouth—all salt and ham and cheesy warmness. He smiles. Brent Foley is quite good at being a bachelor.

Never mind that his mother is soon thundering down the stairs, poor thing. One of these days she’ll fall and that will be that, as they say. But they say a lot of things, so for now we’ll just concentrate on the fact that Ms. Foley—her first name long ago forgotten—manages her way downstairs and into the living room right at the climax of the shoot-out on television. She has to scream above the noise and gunfire.

“Brent! I said turn down the tee-vee!”

He brushes at crumbs and wiped greasy fingers on his bare, graying chest hairs, grabs the remote control and sighs. A lighted bar onscreen shows the volume going down. Eventually, his mother’s voice ebbs back into clarity.

“—as if I’m not here. I live here too, dammit.”

He looks at her and blinks. She’s dressed for something—a wedding or a funeral. Something fancy. Brent chews and swallows and scratches his thigh and tries not to look at the television. It’s the best part of the movie, when the dudes try to escape by—

“Well?” Ms. Foley says, eyebrows arching.

“Well what? I turned it down,” Brent says and stuffs the remaining half of sandwich in his mouth, chewing. He doesn’t say his mother’s eyebrows look like they were drawn in marker while asleep at a terrible frat party, but the image comes into his mind unbidden and he laughs once and swallows a gag of sandwich. “Where are you going all dressed up, Marmah?”

Ms. Foley sags in the doorway, her face drooping now, showing her seventy years. She no longer winces at her grown son’s—hell, let’s face it, he’s old—his repeated use of the childhood nickname, but Jesus. She looks at him—grayish tighty-whitey underwear, a fold of loose skin covering the front band, the rest all pale and pudgy and poorly formed like a half-finished sculpture of a man, the clay left to slump wetly and slightly deformed by gravity. Her son. Her beamish boy. She almost lets loose a sob when he smiles with cheese in his teeth, but remembers her resolution and composes herself with an adjustment of blouse.

“I’ve got a baby shower and a wake to go to,” she says in monotone, joining Brent in staring at the television. “Be back about sundown. Please clean the garage like you said you would six months ago. Put all of the boxes in the trash. Every one.” She turns to leave. There is a long pause before the front door opens, and Brent holds the remote, his finger on the volume button, waiting. “And I’ll tell everyone that you’re sick, as usual,” her voice came weakened and hollow from the hallway.

“Thanks, Marmah!”

The slam of the door cuts off his last word. He turns up the volume and eats the rest of his sandwich. When his mother returns later that night, he had already fallen asleep even though it was hardly eight. The television blares the end fight scene of Die Hard III. Ms. Foley turns it off and cleans up the plates and cups and such littering the living room from Brent’s day on the couch—almost exactly like every day since before she could remember.

#

There. Hardly an auspicious start to a story, sure, but the beginning must come somewhere. If we start to end too early, we will seem rushed. Besides, the end is nigh. Brent Foley will die today, this beautiful morning in the suburbs of Blank, America. Setting isn’t too important, so we don’t want it to interfere or color the essence of the story with unimportant questions. If in the South, there will be overt racism to cover. If the East or West, stupidity will have to be at the forefront. If the Northwest, it will have to be green and rainy and depressing. Even a flyover, square state will have setting issues. So we’ll just say the suburbs. Somewhere. You know—generic, cookie-cutter suburbia in an American city. And this guy, this Brent Foley guy, will die today.

However, we started with the day before his death for a reason. And though we have to wait for Brent to fully awake from twisted sheets, for him to masturbate and shower, we can take the moment to discuss exactly why the story started yesterday, with Brent making a ham and cheese sandwich before a Die Hard marathon. Consider the fact that, right now, dawn breaks in rosy hues across the rooftops. Birds flutter darkly against the coming sky, ringing the air with song. Now that’s a pretty beginning. Sure.

Hold on… Okay. Brent’s only now stepping into the shower, paunchy belly hanging over his pelvis, shoulders slumped and rounded with softness.

Anyway, while most people will remember their last day alive, rarely do they recollect or even attempt to think about the day before they die. And that’s almost as fascinating, because we know or can intuit quite a bit about a person if death is a full step away as usual, rather than breathing down our neck with certainty. Again, death is less unforgettable and often obliterates entire weeks of memories, but still. The day before death shows us a lot…

Okay. Brent is toweling off and will be downstairs shortly. He wakes this early not because he must or should, or likes the dawn sky and songs of birds, but because if he gets up early his mother will make breakfast. Maybe pancakes, he thinks reflexively and smiles, brushing gray-streaked hair along the sides of his bald, shiny head.

Yes, seeing how and why today is so special required a look into the everyday life of Brent Foley. And yesterday, like all yesterdays, is similar to the day before and even today. But yesterday is also different because it’s over, done. No more mystery.

Today? Anything can happen.

Yesterday, we found Brent in his grayish underwear, watching a Die Hard marathon into the evening—making first a ham and cheese sandwich, then a tuna casserole, then two bowls of cereal—yesterday we witnessed Brent as he truly is, not under the stress of certain death or immediate bodily harm. We will see him under that pressure cooker today, but not yet. Right now, Brent Foley is making his way downstairs in the same tighty-whitey underwear, whistling a tune from a television show he cannot quite remember. This is his last day alive, people. Settle in and get ready.

But first, there is breakfast.

#

Descending the stairs, Brent realizes something is wrong. There is no smell of bacon. No pancakes. Not even coffee. When he gets to the kitchen and opens his mouth to say “Morning Marmah,” his mouth clicks shut at the note on the table with his name written in flowing script. He pads over to the note and scratches his thigh. Looking out the window, he sees no car, so his mother is gone. The note reads:

 

Dearest Brentwood,

I cannot take it anymore and have decided to leave. Please don’t try to find me. The house is paid for through the end of the year. After that, you’ll have to either pay the taxes or I’ll sell the house.

Again, please don’t try to find me.

Love,

Your Mother

 

Brent Foley’s eyes water as he rereads the note, but there is nothing more. No secret message, no nuance or hesitancy. His lip trembles and he drops the note to the floor, steadying himself on the kitchen table so he doesn’t faint and fall and crack his skull and die now that there isn’t anyone to find him wounded on the floor.

Mother? Gone?

“Marmah!” Brent sobs and collapses to the floor, crying fully now in that pathetic way that men cry because they’re not really good at it so they sound like wounded walruses. He slobbers and a snot string reaches the graying hairs on his chest. Still, he cries and calls out “Marmah,” in a steadily weakening voice until he is spent and lying on the cold kitchen tiles, heaving for breath and trying to understand this new world. His mother is gone—gone! She left, just like his father almost thirty years earlier, with a note left on the same table.

And Brent finds a sudden rage within him. He snatches the note and reads it over and over. “Don’t try to find me.” Not don’t find me, but don’t “try” to find me. As if I couldn’t, Brent thinks in a red anger. To tell a person not to try to do something is much more insulting than asking them not to do it outright.

“Oh, I’ll try, mother,” Brent says brokenly into the air. He sucks the snot through his nose and back into his head, wipes at his eyes. “I’ll find you, Ms. Foley!”

#

While Brent is upstairs getting dressed—a rather confusing procedure due to his rustiness—we’ll consider a few things until he’s ready to die.

First, we don’t want to cut a sympathetic figure out of a slouchy forty-six year old man with a bald head, wearing only stained, ragged tighty-whitey underwear and sobbing like a wounded walrus on the kitchen floor. It’s not funny, really. And we’re not looking at his story because Brent Foley will die today—death is nothing special no matter how much you want to think otherwise. You too will be walking along one day and BOOM! you’re dead just like that. Certainly, there might some who mourn your passing, but they’ll be dead soon too, and everything you’ve done will be forgotten.

That’s a sadder and stronger play at sympathy than the little story of Brent Foley you’re experiencing now…

Ah, Brent just found where his pants have been all this time—folded up neatly in the dresser, beneath all his airplane model glues and paints. Who knew? Once he finds socks—lo! another miraculous drawer full of clean clothing—he’ll be sure to figure out shoes and be downstairs, so we don’t have enough time to discuss sympathy and other obtuse subjects. We have to consider what we know.

Brent Foley awoke to find himself alone after living back at home… Wait. He’s not “back” because he never left. No. Brent Foley lives in the same house where he grew up, some generic cookie-cutter suburban home in a nameless city. He never went to college. He never got married. He held two jobs—one at a bookstore until people stopped reading, the other at a record store until people stopped paying for music—but that was years and years ago. Bent has spent the last sixteen years unemployed and happy. His days are filled with food and the comfort of television, or online day-long video game battles with preteens across the globe. And today his mother abandoned him. Today he will die. That’s all we know.

But consider the now… What will happen to Brent? Watch as he negotiates the stairs in his cheap, black dress shoes. He looks very much like dog made to walk on its hind legs. His blue dress shirt stands out, but only because of the orange flannel pajama pants.  He stops in the hall and recalls that he doesn’t have a key, hasn’t needed a key in many years. So instead of messing with it, he leaves the door unlocked and steps outside, shielding his eyes from daylight.

Mrs. Gable, the widow across the street, witnesses Brent’s first foray into The World of Man in recent memory. She will later note that he looked almost proud, his hand shielding his eyes from the sun appeared more like a salute, and his posture had improved, probably by the pants and shoes. But Mrs. Gable is no more important to this story than the setting… we just needed you to see Brent as he emerges from his house. Now, we must move fast because there are no more showers or breakfasts or getting dressed—it’s straight off to death we must go!

#

The Aristotelian and classicists among you, if any remain, will buck and thrash at the idea that Brentwood Foley and the story of his death holds any literary merit whatsoever. He’s not special, after all. He is no hero and has nowhere to fall, since he’s already on one of the lowest rungs in humanity. Really, if you want an antagonist, American culture is to blame. People like Brent Foley are the reason ISIS exists. What other society in the history of the world would allow a man to not work, not even fill a void or space, yet live comfortably and happily? None. No, people like Brent Foley would be put on an ice flow if among the Inuit, forced into a winter blizzard if among the Blackfeet, killed in some senseless battle if born before 1960… in fact, any society but American society in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries would have found a way to weed out a Brent Foley, or at least put him to good use.

So let’s be clear: It is not his stature that makes Brent the focus of this story, and a worthy focus at that. Personally, I wish for any other character in which to write a story. If I’m going to spend many hours and days and weeks honing a story to its essence, I’d much rather it have a wonderful, dynamic protagonist. I’d much rather have an interesting setting. But these things are beyond the control of the artist. God, or whatever, has placed the story of Brent Foley before me and given me the task of telling it to the best of my ability.

That said, if you find yourself yawning or this tale too poorly put, please blame my storytelling faults rather than Brent Foley. He’s just a character. It’s not his burden. And after spending so much time thinking and writing about Brent Foley, I have come to peace with his character and would like you all to do the same.

Perpend:

What other man on the planet could be of more interest to us than Brent Foley? He is a product of our time. He is a man without the pressures of society to bully him into right behavior. He is what all of mankind has been working toward since the dawn of time—to live so freely that life ceases to make sense. He is the culmination of every life and all of time since the Big Bang. Brent Foley, crying in the kitchen wearing only his underwear because his Marmah left him out of disgust, is the penultimate character for the modern American short story. He is the product of the pasture of our collective culture in which he has grazed his entire, worthless life. He is why even reasonable people believe in abortion. He is a flower growing out of pavement. He is the glowing coal of hatred burning in the heart of every terrorist. Brent Foley is greater than Gatsby. He is a mountain of a man, a beacon of humanity, an idea larger than reality. Brent Foley is the canary in the mineshaft of American culture, and today he will fall over dead, warning us all that the absent hammer is lifted high!

#

Too much?

#

Having not left the house in over a year, not since an emergency room visit after food poisoning from a HotPocket last fall, Brent is unsure which way to turn. He long ago let his driver’s license expire, and doesn’t have a car anyway. He is penniless, so public transportation is a no-go. He must walk in his black Payless Shoes an unknown distance to… to try…

Brent spasms and looks at the ground due to a sudden vertigo. Try? he wonders, the word catching in the gears of his brain like a bucketful of rusty nails. Just where should I go? Will I even find mother? Should I go and ask people on the street where she went?

He looks across the street in time to see the curtain fall back at Mrs. Gable’s place. Maybe she saw Marmah leave, Brent thinks. Maybe she can tell me which way to turn—left or right. And as Brentwood Foley takes his first certain steps in an unknowable time, he is completely unaware of the approaching garbage truck, even though it’s enormous and sounds like a train. Brent steps right into the road, the driver honks and slams on the breaks, but it’s too late—our dear American hero lies dead in the road, his thorax crushed.

And that’s it, folks. I’m sorry if you don’t like it.

But we were in this story together, you and I, and we have to consider what possible parable might be drawn from the death of Brent Foley. What is the lesson, right? What ambiguous theme can be gleaned? We have a beginning, some rise in tension, a plot shift and rise in action to a definitive end. So why do we need more? Why are we always just a little dissatisfied, even when eating cake or making love? Why could it always be even better?

In a way, the death of Brent Foley answers all of these questions and more. You are free to strip away all other words and ask, Why? Ask it over and over, with a child’s persistence. Why? Why? Why?

Why are you reading this? Why did your relationship with your father turn so sour? Why did you say that to your brother’s wife? Why can’t you stand your cousin’s voice? Why didn’t you achieve more dreams of your youth? Why aren’t you smarter or prettier? And why are you here, living on earth for a reason so unknowable you must either have the blindness of faith, or drag yourself out of bed daily in a meaningless void?

The answer, my friend, is in the death of Brent Foley. Don’t be like him and you’re doing all right, you know? I mean, no matter how boring or terrible you happen to be, you’re not as bad or bad off as Brent, right? And what are stories supposed to do but make us feel a little better about ourselves, the world, or our understanding of the world?

So sit back and congratulate yourself. Buy yourself some ice cream or go have sex. You’ll never be as bad as Brent Foley. You’re reading, after all. Brent hated reading. You are probably dressed in more than underwear. Kudos! You also probably provide some meaningful work or space-filling for our society and culture. And finally, you’re probably not dumb enough to get run over by a garbage truck. That only happens to children mostly, because children are dumb. But you’re reading an adult story, with sophistication, and likely are familiar with roadways and general physical laws concerning motion and mass—if not in theory, then in practice.

You see, we sometimes have to examine the lesser among us. We can’t always focus on the mighty, the conquerors, the successful, the amazing tales. And in lifting up that which is so low, we too rise. Stories like Brent’s death lift us all because it’s not us and never could be and we’ll all have a much better death—and probably a better day before death as well.

We would be wise to pause and think about that for a while…

###

Dr. Ambrose Delasco served as an Associate Instructor of Philosophy at the City College of New York from 1959 through 1968. His first book, The Primal Agenda, self-published in 1960, while difficult to find due to the fact that only 237 copies ever sold and only eight are known to exist, remains his most credible and best-selling book. In it, he expounds upon the principal of the Primal Agenda, the idea that all humans are born with an inherent destiny or will that is separate from whatever stimuli the individual might encounter in his or her life.

A regurgitation of the old nature vs. nurture debate, the Primal Agenda explains, according to Delasco, why some people from pleasant families are assholes or even murderers, and vice versa. However, two years after publication of the book, Delasco discarded this theory, calling it ���ridiculous��� and never mentioned it again except in passing. By then he had formed perhaps his greatest and most profound theory, that of the Keystone Will.

According to Delasco���s theory of Imminent Decline, the average human specimen has a classic bell curve of psychological, intellectual, and sexual potential. There are the zero states of birth and death, and between these two brief points in time the individual passes through his or her arc of life���composed of individual attributes and the individual will affected by the will of others, illustrated in the Keystone Will Theory. Delasco also claimed that any individual���s arc of life can easily be expressed on a three-dimensional graph. His attempts to draw three-dimensional graphs on paper were largely a colossal failure because he wanted them to actually be three-dimensional, so he ended up getting rid of the Z axis completely and combining personal will and the effect of outside wills on the same axis (Y1 and Y2). The results were confusing and nonsensical.

Dr. Delasco, teaching at City College some ten years after the golden age of philosophy had passed through the halls of the school, never to return, theorized that all human sexuality was nonsense. He likened it to psychology and claimed that ���any attempt to fathom the vast intricacies of the human mind and combine that wondrous potential with the bias of the individual, well . . .��� Here, he stopped and took a sip of water from a mug, purple, always sitting at the corner of his desk. He loosened his tie.

���Listen,��� he said, banging the cup down and causing more than a few students to flinch awake. ���To try and truly understand why a person is, say, manic-depressive or homosexual, instead of corralling them into the tidy little box of the predefined term itself, is an enormous undertaking, one the common individual, much less a doctor of psychology, is willing to endure. No. In order to understand disorder, or order, or sexuality, one has to figure how the individual fits into the larger scheme of things. No one is manic-depressive, just as no one is homosexual. These are just terms created by the limited human mind to attempt to understand that which is beyond its capabilities. For the same reason we created���excuse me, Mr. Moss? Do you have something to say? So then may I continue?���For the same reason we once created gods and myths . . .�� with those foundations mostly destroyed, we now need to create other ways to understand our world. Like homosexuality.���

Dr. Delasco looked out over the lecture hall, its scattering of students in various stages of slump, and narrowed his eyes.

���Who in here is heterosexual?��� he asked, and most students who were awake or had been listening raised their hands or shifted. ���Well, so am I,��� Delasco said. ���And yet . . .�� I could have sex with, with this desk���this one right here���if I were so inclined, and if I felt a deep attraction to furniture. So would that be homosexual? Objosexual? Ridiculous. You can be a schizophrenic lesbian if you like, or a clinically depressed bisexual, but these are just terms. In the end, you are who you are due to your will and its interaction with the wills of others. Create whatever terms you want, but they���re meaningless when the enormous potential of human existence is considered. Such oversimplifications are an insult to our very humanity. Don���t look at me like that, Mr. Sheifer. What, exactly, is so funny?���

And here, the transcript of Delasco���s lecture ���Common Existence and the New Hedonism��� abruptly ends.

#

The Soup of Tendencies lecture consisted of Dr. Delasco attempting to demonstrate that out of any chaos of possibilities, a set of tendencies is easily definable. As often, Delasco then grafted this idea onto the human specimen by noting that out of all the possibilities for existence, some people tended to be shallow, self-centered bigots while others were kind, humble and generous. His Soup of Tendency, and by extension the idea of Universal Guilt, was an attempt to explain that this was a result of willful decisions made by an individual to define his or her existence, yet who managed, on a whole, to maintain a primal balance of tendency. Ergo, there will always good people and bad people, and there could never be an overwhelming balance of one or the other. One begets the other. So that in the sum of human possibility, whether you were a lout or a gentleman or a dunce or a genius all depended on the influences around you. To surround oneself with positivism is an effort to remain pure.

However, in a further hypothesis, Delasco stated:

���Since electrons are constantly shared by differing particles unless their valence shells are complete, such as with the noble gasses, each piece of matter consists of the matter of the objects within its vicinity. Electrons bounce from one thing to the other; now part of a water molecule in your eye, now joining with the carbon in the wooden chair on which you sit, perhaps bounding on a wave of light across the room and used temporarily by my chalk here before being scraped against the slate so you can see this mark, here, by that very same eye.���

This further explains the Soup of Tendencies because ���opposites tend to attract��� and ���once a particle is laden with an aspect of its former self���whether from the eye of a student drunkard, the mindless carbon of a wooden chair, or the positivity of light���well, that particle, when choosing its next form, will go to the furthest opposite out of common tendency.���

His comments were met with blank stares and mouths frozen in yawn.

#

In what would be Delasco���s final lecture, he responded to a student comment that all motion was relative and therefore the universe, the galaxy, solar system and even the planet Earth were absolutely motionless, with no fixed point to determine their speed.

���Nonsense,��� he was noted to have said. ���Look, get your feet off that chair. Now, say you���re the Sun���no, don���t actually say it, just pretend that you���re the Sun and I���m the Earth. Right now, I���m orbiting you, correct? And if we were to fixate my speed in relation to your position, we would find me moving at about, oh, 67,000 miles per hour, correct? And now imagine that I���m the solar system and you���re at some point in the galaxy, which is this room. Not only is the Earth traveling at 67,000 miles per hour but now that is multiplied by the universal orbit of a half million miles per hour, while the galaxy itself is rotating at 1.4 million miles per hour. Since the speed of light is only 670 million miles per hour, it is safe to assume through multiplication and conjecture that we are traveling far in excess of the speed of light in relation to any fixed point in creation.���

Therefore, he concluded, with mass and time increased, ���we exist like a sparrow fart in a strong wind. And due to our relative���there���s that word for you, Mr. Moss���our relative position, we have long lives and own cars and have affairs and enjoy pictures of naked women.���

Later in his lecture, Dr. Delasco tried to further quell the student���s remarks, which had turned the tide against him, by illustrating that ���when walking backward, like I am now, I am still moving at incredible speeds yet somehow slower too. How, you ask? No, not just because I���m walking backward, but because I���m walking westward, with the rotation of the Earth rather than against it. Therefore, my overall speed is slightly reduced by������

At this point, Delasco fell over a chair and injured his kidney. The lecture was over. He never returned to the lectern and died some three months later, possibly as a result of the fall.

#

According to Delasco, sweets and intercourse were the only reason to get up every day. Without the hope that perhaps this day would bring you either something sweet, or intercourse with another human, then there would be a whole flurry of suicides, or most people would just wither away into nothing and die (as they are apt to do anyway). He attempted to tie this concept to his Theory of Imminent Decline by noting that the older we get, the more we realize that we may not have intercourse that particular day, and if we do, it won���t be as satisfying as we imagined it to be. And, just as the first bite of chocolate cake is better than any other after it, so too does the lure of sweets fade away with age. We come to know what to expect of intercourse and sweets. They become routine.

At this point in the lecture, he would usually go off on a tangent about the importance of affairs, pornography, and imported candies.

#

In an off-handed mentioning of his Theory of Accumulation (it was never developed completely) Dr. Delasco suggested that as we pass through our own brief lives, we are exposed to stimuli both physical and metaphysical���memories, morals, prejudices, epistemological modes of being, the falsity of playground rules���all of which would naturally contribute to a very confused state for an individual, a psychotic state, unless something is done. Often, these aspects of existence ���are incongruous or downright hostile with each other.��� And this thereby causes typical individuals to ���choose one over the other��� and thus ���solidify their beliefs and chosen memories and prejudices���everything that makes them who they are���into a calcifying mass that accumulates more and more of the same elements until the individual is a simplified humanoid, a living fossil in the psychosomatic sense. New thought, new ideas become rejected outright by the established accumulations and������

Here, he paused dramatically but it was right before Thanksgiving break so only a handful of students were present.

���Well, this explains why bigots and judgmental assholes are so difficult to convert toward a more open mindset. It���s best to give up on these calcified individuals, and concentrate on your own accumulations, directly tied to the Soup of Tendencies theory, and accumulate the correct aspects of existence, the best particles of your opposites. It���s important that you actively and willfully build the foundations for your calcification because we will all calcify into something. But it���s up to us to determine what that something will be.���

And the lecture ended suddenly, on an unusually conclusive note, even ten minutes early.

#

Dr. Ambrose Delasco once stated in lecture, a segue concerning Nietzsche���s various physical afflictions:

���Sorrow and suffering cut deep grooves in the soul, and these are for joy to fill. Without those grooves���those pits and scars of the pain of existence���joy just slips right off a person like melting butter on a tipped skillet.���

Dr. Ambrose Delasco���s most complex concept was that of the Keystone Will. In this lecture, he utilized some four dozen balls of yarn to illustrate his concept to the class. The theory states that the individual will is truly singular and unique.

���If I decide to throw this book at Mr. Moss,��� he stated to his class, waving a copy of the never-used textbook. ���It will be an expression of my will that supersedes his own, which is to merely sit there with his feet up on a chair in front of him, and remain unharmed. Thus, the individual will has great power and, at the same time, a great impotence.��� Delasco then sidetracked on a short discussion on impotence in males and how pornography and affairs have been shown to help. When getting back on subject, he made the class spend forty-five minutes tying themselves together with string, strand by strand.

Eventually, there were only two or three volunteers left, running lines of string from one student to the next, from the professor to each student. Most of the string was reportedly purple to ���reflect the darkness of nothingness between things.��� Once the class was appropriately encumbered, with thousands of feet of string connecting them all in myriad ways���one tied from her wrists to three random students, one by his neck and thigh to eight students and a chair, one secured at each limb to the light fixtures and the professor���s torso, one to three students, a doorknob and the professor���s left foot���Delasco began his important comments, standing very still so as not to disturb the strings.

���Quiet down, please. Thank you. Do you see? You���re already experiencing the effect of the Keystone Will. No, settle down. Mr. Moss, you���ve got to keep your feet up on the chair���do you see that mass of string around them? Okay. Now, this is but a humble representation of our present existence. We are all individuals, with individual wills, and yet with each enactment of our will we make noticeable reverberations in the universe, in the wills of others. As an example������

And here, Delasco yanked his right arm���which had innumerable students tied to it in varying degrees���upward and with great force. Some students yelled out in pain and shifted, causing others to shift, and the movement rippled around the room in a strange pattern.

���Now,��� he began again. ���Notice how some of you were jerked painfully by the expression of my will which in turn caused others to be so affected. Yet, as far as you know, the movement might have been entirely your own, not caused by me or anybody else. Normally you can���t see or feel the strings, so often what you think is your own will is really the reaction of interacting with another���s. Notice too how several of you were not affected in the least though you could clearly perceive the expression of my will as an observer. Now, let���s try something different.���

Delasco encouraged a student to attempt to change his seat. The student gingerly maneuvered about with the taut strings while the other students groaned and had to shift or stand or bend in half in order for the student to change seats. But he did it and Delasco beamed with pride.

���This is exactly how the individual will, in a seemingly neutral act, can affect others. The expression of your will doesn���t have to be negative to cause other people great discomfort and chaos.���

He then tried to get two students to kiss, but they were both boys and finally encouraged a beautiful black girl with a string on each limb to kiss the shy Asian exchange student with his head wrapped with five strings. Their movements were said to have been so slow and deliberate, so kind, that the strings connecting them never pulled. Other students contorted themselves impossibly to help them come together and their kiss was brief, awkward, but rather beautiful. A hush had descended over the lecture hall.

���Mr. Moss,��� Delasco said, teetering on one leg at the front of the class with arms mangled and contorted in the air around him. ���Will you now please put down your legs?���

And as soon as he did so, the two metaphorical lovers were torn apart and a great groan went through the class as countless students shifted and jerked and their skin burned where the strings pulled and slid.

���This,��� the professor said. ���This is life. Now you���ve got to imagine the strings vertically too, not just horizontally. Imagine them connecting every single thing in the universe together. Notice that though you are not connected to her way over there, but by association, by degrees you are connected.���

The students stared at Delasco, standing there on one leg, some perhaps noticing him for the first time even though the final exam was next class.

���If you go around pushing your will around willy-nilly, you���ll cause endless strife and difficulty even if that isn���t your intention. Likewise, if you just sit there in passivity, you will still be subject to the will of others. If I wanted to go to the door right now, I would likely drag a bunch of you with me. And still, there was that kiss. Thank you Ms. Ebalu and Mr. Chen. Notice how when several of us work together, we make it easier, make things happen. That is the Keystone Will Theory. When the individual will can convince or motivate others toward a goal���no matter if it���s a common goal or not���then something beautiful happens. We help each other, and one day, one day,��� he paused for dramatic effect, his audience in actual captivity. ���One day instead of all of us pulling and yanking in our own selfish little enactments of will, one day we might realize that working together can solve every problem known to man, when the cumulative or Universal Will eclipses any individual will that would do harm or is negative or just downright mean. And we all have the Keystone Will within us.���

He stared at the class a moment longer and smiled, his thigh quivering in the air.

���Class dismissed,��� he said.

And it took the students some fifteen minutes to extricate themselves. Most left the lecture hall rubbing the red marks where their skin was chafed and burned from the strings.

###

(The preceeding was an excerpt from Echo Detained, a novel that investigates Delasco���s theories to further the narrative arc. Peter Moss, Delasco’s former student and editor of his lectures, is in production of Ambrose Delasco���s biography, tentatively titled ���A Mind Detained��� and is due to be released in 2017 by Simon and Schuster. The photo at the top of this post is the only known photograph showing Moss and Delasco together, taken by an anonymous student circa 1966.)

Most people take mirrors for granted (if they���re vain) but you must realize that the modern glass mirror was only invented in 1600 by Venetians (of course). However, it took another three hundred years before mirrors were actually affordable enough for all households, and these were often quite small. And now? Mirrors, mirrors everywhere.

It has been said that to break a mirror will bring seven years of bad luck. And I���m sure ���they��� said it, because we���ve all heard of this hazard. But it���s actually much worse than seven years of bad luck. No. Anyone who breaks a mirror will die a horrible, horrible death. No shit.

Have you ever seen something in a mirror���some color or movement���that you know wasn���t on this (the real) side of things? If not, good. You���re not insane.

If only Narcissus had a mirror! He could have looked at himself all he wanted without the threat of nymphs.

Mirrors are said to ward off evil, since evil can��� t stand to look at itself. So people put mirrors facing the front door. It���s perfectly logical and actually works. However, evil often enters through a window.

Inside each mirror is another universe much like our own except everything is spelled backwards.

There are still many primitive people of the world who have never seen a mirror, and the best thing they can come to is a still pool of water, or a dark bowl of water���and even then, they���re always leaning down. Miles Peterson, the renowned anthropologist, was visiting a remote tribe deep in the Amazon when his mirror became anathema. Peterson had taken out a hand-sized signal mirror to shave and the village priest���inquisitive���leaned over Peterson���s shoulder. The priest saw his own face in the reflection and somehow thought Peterson had stolen his head. The villagers killed Peterson, smashed his mirror to bits and later all died horrible, horrible deaths.

A mirror reflects light at an angle particular to its surface, and the reflected light preserves most of the characteristics of the original light. That is to say, that what you see in the mirror is just refracted light, but nothing that is truly real. You see the image of reality, spun 180-degrees on a vertical axis. To see things in the truest light, one would need to look into a mirror facing another mirror and view the second reflection.

Some early mirrors used mercury or lead applied to a bit of glass, and the manufacture of such mirrors resulted in high mortality rates. Mirror-maker was once the most dangerous occupation in the world.

Mirrors have also been used as weapons. Ancient warriors of Mongolia wore mirrored armor to protect them from evil and to ward off the enemy by dazzling their eyes with light. The Persians stole this technology and improved upon it so well that some of their warriors could not even be seen unless they moved���otherwise they would appear as a shimmering reflection of their surroundings.

On that note, we all know that a concave mirror can concentrate the sun���s energy so well that a hand-sized version can ignite paper. But consider what the international space station���s true goal is���and that is to install a concave mirror a mile in diameter, positioned in low orbit. The mirror could be turned or configured to generate weather patterns, illuminate a city at night, or focused into a ray of death approximately 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit���capable of turning any object we can imagine into ash in a nanosecond.

Funhouse mirrors are not fun, and they���re barely mirrors. Polished metal can never refract light with the same precision as plate glass backed with silver. To look into a distorted reflection can bring about madness and other psychological afflictions.

Many early mirrors were made of polished stone or great pieces of mica. No wonder people back then didn���t look as good as we look today.

Three mirrors! Now we���re getting somewhere. If you ever have the opportunity to have three mirrors before you, play with their placement to give yourself multiple torsos, or to see your reflection in reflection in reflection in reflection all the way to infinity. If you brought a telescope and looked into the furthest reflection, it would be a much younger version of yourself since light can only travel so fast. No matter how fast you look, you���ll never see the ���now��� of reality, but only the past. DeSelby, the famous philosopher, drove himself to madness with three mirrors on this very concept.

Another less-famous madman and philosopher was Ambrose Delasco, who taught for a time at the City College of New York. Delasco became infatuated with DeSelby���s work with three mirrors, so took it to the next level. Delasco found that each successive reflection in a mirror not only occurred in the past, but images would get successively older each time refracted. To this end, he created a device that started out with a two small mirrors in front of the eyes that reflected what was reflected from a slightly larger mirror, which in turn reflected what was reflected by a slightly larger mirror until a total of forty-seven reflections would enter the eye at the smallest mirrors nearest the wearer. His contraption was limited by size and weight, as Delasco intended to walk the earth ���seeing in the present what had already occurred in the past.��� You can imagine the looks he got when tromping around Harlem with his two-hundred pound refraction device strapped to his body, the great arcs of mirrors looping on metal hoops some ten feet into the air. On his second outing, Delasco was struck by a city bus while wearing the mirrors because he didn���t see it coming, which not only put him in the hospital, but made him abandon his experiments with mirrors since ���the past and the present cannot coexist.���

If you look sideways in a mirror, how come you can still see things in periphery that aren���t facing the mirror? Please do not try this at home, since it can cause dislocation and madness.

A stupid little shit named Tommy Phelps, of Alton, Illinois, didn���t believe in the bad luck associated with breaking mirrors. When, at the feisty age of fifteen, he said that breaking a mirror is just like breaking anything else, everyone stepped back a few paces. He was said to have broken over a thousand mirrors by the time he was in college. He argued, and this is where things get strange, that to break a mirror is actually to create more mirrors since each shard is capable of reflection. He went into physics and was widely published in the 1940s. His groundbreaking study on the positive aspects of smashing mirrors titled, ���To Increase and Multiply,��� shook the foundations of what we know of luck and evil. The highlight of the study was when he took large dressing mirror and broke it into thousands and thousands of mirror fragments, some the size of a pinhead. So much for all that bullshit about bad luck, right? Wrong. Thomas Phelps died by strangulation, amputation and drowning after he was shot, stabbed, poisoned and buried alive in burning oil���all at the same time. A pretty fucking horrible death, if you ask me.

Have you ever looked in a mirror and seen a different face looking back at you in surprise? That would be pretty weird.

Many people remember their first kiss with another human, but forget all the practice they had kissing themselves in the mirror to see what it will look like to another. In his own experiments, the author didn���t French kiss until the age of twenty-seven due to the trauma experienced when French kissing himself in the mirror and the ensuing horror. The horror.

One-way mirrors are also called two-way mirrors. There is no explanation for this, but it is well known that to look from behind a mirror (into what the mirror is reflecting) is to see another reality entirely. This is why one-way (or two-way) mirrors are used so often for dubious purposes. Any public mirror is likely a one-way (or two-way) mirror. What you���re looking at is a reflection, certainly, but the reflection is also being looked at from behind by a camera or government agent. The only way to know is to smash the mirror, but then you die a horrible, horrible death. Much better to just realize that you���re always being watched and act accordingly.

It has been predicted that the next, and perhaps last, great invention of mankind will be a mirror capable of accurate reflection��� that is, a reflection that is occurring simultaneously as that which it reflects, and doesn���t spin everything reverse on the vertical axis. However, this technology is beyond our comprehension at the present. For now, one can only hope.

Jeb��ber

intr. verb: to shudder after urination,

a sometimes pleasurable sensation

from a tremor in the gonads

to a full-bodied spasm

bordering on near-orgasmic experience; as in

That jebber nearly made me fall over.

noun: 1 The act of jebbering; as in

Jesus, I just had quite a jebber.

2 Anyone who supports Jeb Bush

for political office higher than comptroller; as in

Fuck off to Florida and shoot some

black people, you racist, conservative,

homophobic jebber son of a bitch.

Let���s face it, ladies. Telling the difference between some douchebag and a man of substance can be tricky. Or not.

And while some women don���t care, or even enjoy, being coupled with a dickhole of a man���either in dating or marriage���it���s my civic duty to help women who truly desire a decent fellow on their arm.

I���ve seen too many great women friends fall for the lowliest of men���and it���s both sad and frustrating to watch. Can���t they clearly see���as I can���that this guy is a dickhole?

(And before you get all pissy, I use the terms ���dickhole��� and ���douchebag��� freely here to refer to idiot men, and ���skank��� to refer to women who prefer, or like, dickholes and douchebags. If you���re offended, get a life and take a chill pill.)

Anyway, as a man myself, I have a lifetime of inside information to accompany the copious inferences listed below. You can trust the following tell-tale signs that show a man is a dickhole, or possibly a douchebag. But if you���re a woman and don���t agree, or find offense because I just outed your fellow, you���re probably a skank. And most of the men on this list love a skank, so don���t worry.

Let���s get to it, shall we? Any woman interested in finding a decent man should avoid:

Men who don���t look you in the eyes when speaking to you.

This one should be easy, but too many women make excuses for such behavior. He���s deep. He���s troubled. His mind is too strong to merely exist in the ���now��� of the moment.

No, he���s a shady fuck. If a man isn���t looking you in the eyes while speaking, he���s not deep or mysterious, he���s an asshole who is either lying or trying to hide the fact that he���s a dickhole.

On the plus side for skanks, this fellow will try to maintain the ���front��� that he���s deep and meaningful for quite a while���until he���s outed, of course. Which always happens. And what do these fellows do once the world discovers they���re really shallow, lying sacks of shit? Look the other way���
Guys who wear Axe Body Spray.

This stuff smells like rancid ass, and no man would ever dare to spray this substance on his person. And while any over-use of cologne is a sure-sign that a man is a douche (we should never be able to smell a man after he passes, or if we���re standing within ten feet) Axe Body Spray is the worst.

Usually, Axe Body Spray is used to cover up ���loser scent��� that most douchebags produce naturally���an odor that is a combination of sweaty gym sock and cat piss.

However, there are plenty of skanks who grew up near chemical plants, or have no sense of smell, and find Axe Body Spray attractive. But let���s face it��� men who use this smell like the freshly mopped floor of a Mexican hotel. (Disclaimer: That last statement is not racist. I am fortunate enough to live in a mixed culture, and I love Mexico, even Mexican hotels. The floors of a Mexican hotel are always freshly mopped, and have an acrid, sweet chemical odor that is not unpleasant for hotel floors, but should not be associated with a living human being. That���s all I���m saying.)
Men who have a chain attached to their wallets.

Nobody is going to steal your six dollars, you douuchebag fuck.
A man with a tattoo on the neck or hand.

Look, there are some really really stupid men out there, and I always wished that they just had a sign on their forehead that said ���dickhole.��� This is as good as you���re going to get.

Usually narcissistic, aggressive, and confident without any logical reason to be confident, these are perhaps the most easy to spot.

However, the incredible depth of their stupidity and douchebaggery can often work as a magnet for the skank who wants to stand out in a crowd.
The man who is a bona-fide Gym Rat.

He���s got little outfits and special clothes, probably wafting Axe Body Spray while watching himself watch himself watch for hotties in the mirror while doing his ���reps.���

Look, a real man doesn���t need to work out, and will still have a manly body���not some model���s body that (in time and with scant neglect) will turn into roundness and soft lines. Kind of womanly, eventually.

A real man can change his oil, lay a concrete footer for a retaining wall, and screw his lady���all in the time it takes a Gym Rat to do his ���routine��� for that marvelous, cut body. If you���ve got no scrapes or calluses on your hands from doing actual work, you���re likely a soft douche.

Besides, real work is good for the mind. Lifting a weight for no logical reason over and over and over again? It���s boring, and that���s why Gym Rats are usually the most boring people in the world. Unless they���re looking into that mirror. Fortunately for Gym Rats, many women, like many men, are fooled by packaging.
Dickholes who��replace their perfectly functioning headlights for those super-bright and annoying LED headlights.

My god, you���re an asshole.

6b. Douchebags who replace perfectly functioning tire rims for stupid-looking, expensive, giant and impractical rims.

My god, you look like an idiot. Thank you for letting the rest of us know.
Loud men.

One of my favorite African proverbs is: The louder the drum, the more hollow. I don���t know why some people think that volume is somehow associated with character or substance, but there are plenty of skanks out there who like to stand out in a crowd, to see all the heads turn in their direction.

But people are really turning to wonder who the fucking loud douchebag is.
Men who wax any part of their body.

Let���s face it��� They���re merely homosexual (and there���s nothing wrong with that). But really, it���s just a matter of time.
The tough guy.

He���s so sexy! He doesn���t care what other people think (even you, his lady). He���ll say and do what he thinks when he feels like it, no matter who will suffer.

Because he is so small on the inside (and possible “down there”)��he must crush and stomp others to make himself feel like a man.These are the most dangerous douchebags out there, and skanks love them. Many regular women mistake the tough guy’s vapid posturing as character, but tough guys are shallow and prone to bringing females down to a prehistoric and guttural level. Domestic violence, anyone? Again, some skanks love it.

That���s all for now. Part two will come sometime later, but feel free to leave a comment on dickholes and douchebags I haven���t identified yet��� or if you disagree.

And yes, I will cover women too in the coming days���

But ladies? Please do yourself a favor and steer clear of any of the above, or show this to a fellow who you think might be decent, but is showing evidence of douchebaggery. Maybe there���s still time (Hint: There isn���t. He���s always going to be a douchebag).

And fellas? If you made the list, consider changing your ways. You���ll still be a dickhole, but you might be able to hide it for a little while (Hint: Not for long. Settle down with a nice skank and get it over with).

Time has become linear. In earlier incarnations of humanity, time was thought to be circular in nature. Personally, I think it’s a spiral—twisting downward or upward, depending on individual disposition.

We live and die and others come. This much is known. Still, what made us unique from the animals was our ability to conceive an existence that transcends death, be it Valhalla or Heaven or the Elysian Fields. We perceive time marching on, with or without our intervention and permission, and know it will continue long after our passing. Faith is nice, if you have it, because no one really wants to go into the All and Everything naked and alone. With faith, you can sleep at night knowing there is something beyond your own time alive when there really isn’t squat. Sorry.

The first “clock” didn’t measure time at all. I’ll let you guess what it measured.

When the Sun goes into decline on the western horizon, we look at it due to the gravitational pull on the water of our bodies. Daily, the Sun pulls the ocean into time-delayed swells of gravitational pull, and the earth bulges outward toward our life-giving star. The same thing happens to us, since we’re made of so much water—the Sun pulls upon our bodies in a subtle play of gravity. Time is not immune to gravity, so it can swell and recede too, depending on the forces at play. When we look at sunsets, we’re stealing time that is expanded and bulged ever-so-slightly. This is the best moment for making love.

Head West! Time is not constant. At different altitudes, speeds and emotional states, time can vary quite a bit. A person traveling against the rotation of the earth ages much faster than a person traveling with the rotation of the earth. This is why many airplane pilots, who routinely travel west, live much longer lives.

The water clock of ancient Babylon, perhaps our first time-keeping device, was basically a bowl with a hole in it. As water drained into another bowl below, marked with lines or ridges to measure time’s passage, you could tell if it had been nearly a gallon since you last checked. A gallon! Oh, if only we could control time in such a manner… which is what an ancient slave by the name of Baaldar did in service to his provincial king. By always keeping the palace’s water in the upper bowl low, the water had less pressure and would flow more slowly into the second bowl. Thus Baaldar is credited for keeping the province “untouched by time” as one historian put it, where people lived beyond four or five hundred years of age, and a day could last many weeks.

When did humanity decide how long a second would last? In 1206 A.C.E., during the international summit on time, weights and measures. The meeting took place in what is now known as Ceuta, Spain—on the tip of the African Continent. In the end, the second was determined by how long it took the average heart to beat. Since it was in the summer, the attendees’ heart rate was a bit high to compensate for the heat. Just imagine: If the summit had taken place in winter, a second would be one and a half times as long as it is now.

Time is slowing down. Due to the expansion of the universe, a current hour is about ten seconds longer than an hour 1,000 years ago. You might not think this is a big deal, but once the universe reaches its fullest size and contraction begins, then time will run backward and you’ll think it’s a pretty big deal. Why? Because you’ll have to live your life over again, only in reverse.

An hourglass is the worst possible measurement of time. Since tied to gravity, it is highly unreliable. An hourglass on a high mountain will take much longer to run out of sand than one at sea level. Yet hourglasses remained popular for a very long time and are still in use today. The very first watch was not worn on the wrist, but was an hourglass suspended from the neck.

The elephant clock, a wonderfully complex and accurate device invented by Al-Jazari, was both beautiful and complex. About the size of a small car, these clocks were highly decorated in Hindu fashion, and boasted a rider on top of the gold-bangled elephant. Basically, it used water in much the same manner as the water clock, only in reverse. When a bowl with a hole in it (hidden inside of the elephant’s body) filled with water, it would sink and cause an armature to maneuver the elephant’s little rider to bang a drum to indicate an hour. The movement of the rider’s arm would reset the bowl to slowly start filling again. If things had gone a little different, we’d probably all use elephant clocks today. However, after the many deaths that occurred in trying to make one small enough to wear on the wrist or about the neck, it was given up for the simple candle clock.

Mark a candle and as it burns you can note how long it has been by studying the highest mark. The first alarm clock was a nail stuck into the bottom of a candle that was then placed on a metal or ceramic tray. When the candle burned all the way down, the nail would tip over and strike the tray with a little “tink” sound. Good morning! So much better than the terrible “whah whah whah” of our current digital alarms. Plus, just try to use the “snooze” function on a candle clock.

The inventor of the “snooze” button, a lazy but resourceful engineer at Westinghouse Electric, was named Walter Dunlop and he is worse than Hitler. In 1952, he made a snooze button for his personal clock at home. When discovered by his manager, who had come to see why Dunlop was again late for work, the snooze button came into play at the national level. It is estimated that the snooze button is the worst invention by mankind, resulting in a loss of 490 billion man-hours of labor, consciousness and lovemaking to date.

A man-hour is two minutes shorter than a woman-hour.

We die of time. It accumulates in our very bones. That is why it is appropriate to say, on your deathbed, that you are “Too full of days” right before you croak. If you die violently or by accident or disease, it’s still time that gets you. Time is just not working to your advantage. That’s where we get the notion of “being in the wrong place at the wrong time,” etc.

Many souls are born out of time. Meaning, they should have been born in another era but, due to some cosmic fuck up, are born when they are. This can lead to a life-long feeling of disconnect with current life, mental health issues, and obsessive-compulsive behaviors.

Time is not on anyone’s side. Actually, time is against us all.

If you really believe that life can be measured in little ticks and clumps, seconds to hours to years, then you’re a perfect tool in the mass hallucination that is our current reality. Once the notion of time and gravity are eradicated, we will once again live forever and be able to fly, just as we did 17,000 years ago. What happened? We started to measure time, which cannot be measured, and slowly closed off our former reality which was unbound by measurement or physics or Newtonian Laws.

The time is always right… for anything and everything.